The Plucking Rainbow Orgy

Viewers of British tv might remember Rainbow, a children's show starring the puppet characters Bungle, Zippy, and George, and hosted by Geoffrey Hayes. Recently a movie has been circulating around the web (you can also see it here) purporting to show an episode of Rainbow that's heavily, heavily laced with sexual innuendo. Way too much innuendo to possibly be accidental. It's been dubbed the 'Rainbow Plucking Orgy' tape. It's very funny, but is it real? Was it ever really broadcast? According to the Planet Gromit site, the tape is real, but it never aired. It was created as a joke and was not meant to see the light of day. I have no idea how it's surfaced now.

I am the writer of the Planet Gromit website and I thought it best to clarify what it is that I found out about the Rainbow tape.

My findings have lead me to believe that the tape was originally put together by the cast as part of a christmas party joke. The footage was never intended to be released, but it appears that the archived tape has been dug up and put onto the internet with the pretence that it was actually broadcast as a real episode.

If I remember correctly though, the show originally ran for a minimum of 20 minutes, so there is no way that it was broadcast as an episode, as the footage is only 5 minutes long.

There is no evidence to suggest that there is dubbing involved - especially as the hand gestures and lip movements on closer inspection to accurately fit. Therefore I can only conclude that the christmas party theory is in fact true.

Thanks for linking to me by the way, although I'm only a lone blogger so all of this is in fact only hearsay.

Posted by Gromit on Thu Jul 15, 2004 at 11:59 AM

There was a newsposting in one of the major British papers (online) sometime this past week regarding it. And according the newspaper it was a joke taping meant for an internal event. They may have gotten it off Gromit though...

Posted by N/A on Fri Jul 16, 2004 at 01:09 AM

OK, I was trying to find a link to some sort of article that explains this, this item comes up regularly ususally explained as a Childrens TV Show Pilot that never aired or the like. Rainbow (the show this cast was in) was a Childrens TV show than ran once a week for almost Twenty Years in the UK until 1991.

In the 60's/70's (pre Internet,pre Home VCRs etc.) the Technicians behind the UK TV Stations (BBC and ITV) put together their own tapes to be played at their Christmas Party. Typically they contained the usual 'bloopers' but there was the occasional "Not for Broadcast" Segment that was put together, usually at the end of the day when the 'proper' taping was completed. The practice was largely ended in the late 70's / Early 80's as the TV Companies wanted to charge the Techs for the use of the TV equipment that was used to put the "Christmas Tapes"

I forgot to mention that the script was written by Roy Skelton, the voice of Zippy and George.

You can read my final compilation of the Rainbow facts by clicking on my name at the bottom of the post. Thanks again for all of your help.

Posted by Gromit on Fri Jul 16, 2004 at 05:29 AM

Looks like a ripoff of the old naughty puppet movie "Meet the Feebles" (directed by Peter Jackson).

Posted by Kristy on Fri Jul 16, 2004 at 12:46 PM

Reminds of the Disney poster parody from the late 1960s or early 1970s (gee, I can't remember :>) ). The poster showed about Disney character in existence at the time, having perverted sex with some other character (the scene with Snow White & the Dwarfs was hilarious), shooting up, wiped out drunk, etc. It was really pretty funny. I had one hanging on the wall of my hippie pad.

Posted by Steve C. in Hotlanta on Mon Jul 19, 2004 at 10:34 AM

i like to play with my balls too

Posted by jason on Fri Feb 04, 2005 at 10:19 PM

I have to tell you, this *was* broadcast. I've been telling people for years about it, and just came across the video (yeah, a little slow I know).

While I believe it was a Christmas joke, I think a VT engineer must have swapped it out at some point during live broadcast or something.

I'd love to know the full story on this, because believe me, it was broadcast!

Andrew: The Christmas tape that Thames produced, the naughty Rainbow which has been featured on TV Offal where Victor Lewis-Smith said it was the "unscreened pilot."

Geoffrey: Victor Lewis-Smith or someone else

Posted by KstL in new york on Tue Mar 29, 2005 at 12:20 PM

The story that does the round is that this was an un-aired pilot edition of the popular children's show. This myth comes from the Channel Four show 'TV Offal' which first publicly broadcast the clip.

In fact it was a specially written sketch for the 1978 Christmas tape put together by staff at the London ITV station Thames Television.

There used to be a strong tradition of such Christmas tapes within British television, comprising of out-takes and contrived situations. Each ITV company would make their own and then swap copies with each other and they would be shown at the various Christmas parties.

However with the deregulation of ITV in the 1990's the companies no longer make programmes in-house tending to use private producers, so the opportunity to create such tapes has, sadly, long-gone.

You can see further Christmas tapes (including another featuring the Rainbow cast) at tv-ark.org.uk and meldrum.co.uk.

Posted by John in UK on Sun Aug 20, 2006 at 08:28 AM

"Looks like a ripoff of the old naughty puppet movie "Meet the Feebles" (directed by Peter Jackson)."

except meet the feebles was like 15 years AFTER this.

Posted by donovan on Fri Feb 08, 2008 at 12:52 PM

sweet & cute. i really liked it.

Posted by Multiwp in manhattan on Fri Feb 05, 2010 at 07:51 AM

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